Can someone fake their own death?

Yes! The butcher in our town did just that about 20 years ago. Him and two buddies went over the damn. He was the lone survivor. Thinking he'd be faulted, he left the corpses and high tailed for Texas. Eventualy he came back and was found not guilty.

there is a story around town about a classmate of mine about 30 years ago. they say that he left his hat and wallet in his new car and torched the car. he was involved in drugs so everyone assumed that he had crossed the local drug cartel ( a very small but cranky cartel) and they would never find his body. from time to time his daughter gets a mysterious card in the mail. but that happened in 1978. i don't think torching a car would work in this day and age. and maybe old frank is in a shallow grave out in the sandhills somewhere after all--s6

You can fake your death by any method that doesn't leave a body, which leaves out any suicide that puts your body in the coroner's hands. And without a body, I imagine you couldn't get a legal assertion of suicide.

Fictional drugs that create the illusion of death have been around since Romeo and Juliet and before, no doubt. I don't know of any real drugs that would do this trick. Have the narcoleptic ever really been taken for dead, as in "The Premature Burial"? Don't know again, but fiction has jumped on the idea often enough.

Drowning is good because given a big enough body of water and/or the right conditions, searchers could miss a body and give up the hunt.

Death by exposure (or foul play) in the wilderness is another good way to fake your demise -- again, given enough wilderness, searchers could credibly hunt in vain. Sometimes it takes months to find a body hidden even in a small band of parkland -- there was an infamous case in Washington, DC not long ago, wasn't there?

You could be assumed dead if you disappeared for long enough. Maybe the assumption of death is all the "dead" character would need. If the character must be declared legally dead, you'd have to research what evidence or what passage of time would satisfy local law.

Of course you can. Look at Elvis. The drug OD was all a front.

Norma Jean said:

Can someone fake their death by suicide or drowning? And if so, how? Its for research.

Click to expand...

Sure it is.

There was a recent story the news about a guy who'd been missing, presumed drowned, in a kayaking incident. Body never found. Insurance money paid out. He turned up in Mexico or someplace like that many years later. And, it turned out, his wife knew all along. Their kids didn't, though, and it came as a very nasty surprise to them.

In what way is this a basic writing question?

Google John Stonehouse
He was a British politician who did this in the 70s

This is a recent incident which occurred around my area:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tees/7134553.stm

He was a canoeist who was thought dead by drowning until her mysteriously re-appeared!